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i am new to digital, and use it to shoot my artwork. i bought a canon
g3, and have been very pleased with the manual white balance feature.
this is critcal for me. i'm surprised there is no exposure correction
as well. exposure correction would be a natural i think, because if a
camera can adjust to a neutral color(white/grey card) why can't it
adjust to their values as well.

so a question came to mind.....is there a camera with a movable spot
meter(canon already has a movable focal point) that allows you to pick
key points of exposure, to which the camera then balances for a proper
exposure. is this not what photographers do with a refelective light
meter when they assertain the exposure of a studio setup?

"bruin70" <> wrote in message
news: om...
> i am new to digital, and use it to shoot my artwork. i bought a canon
> g3, and have been very pleased with the manual white balance feature.
> this is critcal for me. i'm surprised there is no exposure correction
> as well. exposure correction would be a natural i think, because if a
> camera can adjust to a neutral color(white/grey card) why can't it
> adjust to their values as well.
>
> so a question came to mind.....is there a camera with a movable spot
> meter(canon already has a movable focal point) that allows you to pick
> key points of exposure, to which the camera then balances for a proper
> exposure. is this not what photographers do with a refelective light
> meter when they assertain the exposure of a studio setup?

Incident light meter.....
And you could buy a Wallace Expodisc http://www.expodisc.com/
Then your camera can behave like an incident light meter.

Or you could just take your exposure information from the grey card ";^)

"bruin70" <> wrote in message
news: om...
> i am new to digital, and use it to shoot my artwork. i bought a canon
> g3, and have been very pleased with the manual white balance feature.
> this is critcal for me. i'm surprised there is no exposure correction
> as well. exposure correction would be a natural i think, because if a
> camera can adjust to a neutral color(white/grey card) why can't it
> adjust to their values as well.

> so a question came to mind.....is there a camera with a movable spot
> meter(canon already has a movable focal point) that allows you to pick
> key points of exposure, to which the camera then balances for a proper
> exposure. is this not what photographers do with a refelective light
> meter when they assertain the exposure of a studio setup?

Your camera's matrix metering takes several readings from different parts of
the image, looks up the pattern of readings in a database, and tries to
guess what you are doing. When it guesses right, you're home free, but since
it never explains its guesses, you can't tell if it guessed right.

You can use either spot metering or incident metering to actually measure
the intensities of light in the image and use that information to decide the
exposure yourself.

That is, take the camera off the tripod and use the spot meter to measure
the various points in the scene (artwork in your case). The spot meter works
best if you understand the basics of simplified zone exposure.

http://simplifiedzonesystem.com/

The book advertised above is really quite good. Basic, simple, repetitious.
But effective at banging the concepts into your head.

For the gory details: http://www.normankoren.com/zonesystem.html

Note that digital cameras act like slide film; you only get FIVE, not 10 or
11, zones. Read the "Simplified zone system summary" box first.

You can also use an 18% gray card (Kodak makes them, Amazon sells them) to
make the G3 function as an incident meter. I prefer in-camera spot metering
with a simplified zone approach since (a) it measures what the camera
actually sees, (b) it doesn't require being at the location to measure the
light hitting your subject, and (c), it doesn't require guessing
compensation for filters, tele/wide converters, or intervening haze. But
incident metering has its partisans too.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

(bruin70) writes:

> i am new to digital, and use it to shoot my artwork. i bought a canon
> g3, and have been very pleased with the manual white balance feature.
> this is critcal for me. i'm surprised there is no exposure correction
> as well. exposure correction would be a natural i think, because if a
> camera can adjust to a neutral color(white/grey card) why can't it
> adjust to their values as well.
>
> so a question came to mind.....is there a camera with a movable spot
> meter(canon already has a movable focal point) that allows you to pick
> key points of exposure, to which the camera then balances for a proper
> exposure. is this not what photographers do with a refelective light
> meter when they assertain the exposure of a studio setup?

My Olympus C-2100UZ has this, and I think most of Olympus' higher end cameras
have it. You turn on multimetering, and it will average up to 8 different
exposures. I have never used it. What I usually do, especially with sunsets,
is enable auto bracketing, and fire off 5 shots, and later pick the one I like.

--
Michael Meissner
email:
http://www.the-meissners.org